Up in smoke: Sunwing to sue Mabou family for diverted-flight costs

By DAN ARSENAULT Crime Reporter and The Canadian PressPublished February 4, 2013 - 6:37pm Last Updated February 5, 2013 - 9:19am

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Incident could cost about $50,000, company spokesman says

This is a screen grab of a security video at the Bermudan airport where the MacNeil family of Mabou was arrested for smoking on a Sunwing plane bound for the Dominican Republic. (Screen grab from video provided by Bernews.com)

UPDATED 6:30 a.m. TUESDAY

A Cape Breton family hauled off a Sunwing jet Friday night appeared in a Bermuda court Monday.

David MacNeil, 54, of Mabou pleaded guilty to behaving in a disorderly manner by using abusive and offensive language on the flight to the Dominican Republic from Halifax.

His wife, Darlene MacNeil, 52, pleaded guilty to disobeying a lawful order by a flight attendant.

The couple were fined $500 each, with a penalty of 10 days in jail if they failed to pay immediately.

David MacNeil Jr., 22, denied a charge of smoking on the aircraft, while he and his father both denied disobeying a lawful order.

The Crown elected to offer no evidence on the matters that the defendants denied, and the smoking charges were dropped.

A teenage son was also travelling with the MacNeils but was not accused of anything.

The court heard that minutes into the flight, the younger David MacNeil rose from his seat to use the washroom.

Prosecutors said crew members asked him to return to his seat and told him he was not allowed to walk around the cabin until the captain had turned off the seatbelt sign.

Prosecutors alleged the father also tried to access the washroom and was also instructed to return to his seat. The court heard they were then joined by Darlene MacNeil, who asked that her son be allowed to use the toilet.

When the seatbelt sign was deactivated, the son used the washroom and returned to his seat. Prosecutors said the father then went into the washroom, cursing at a flight attendant while doing so.

Prosecutors also said that two hours later, a crew member noticed MacNeil Jr. leaving a washroom smelling strongly of cigarette smoke.

The court heard that after an unsuccessful search for a cigarette butt in the washroom, the crew made the decision to divert the 180-passenger flight to Bermuda to remove the MacNeils.

The flight resumed Saturday afternoon without the MacNeils on board.

While the family members remained silent in court Monday, lawyer Victoria Pearman said the trip was a family vacation gone awry and that tensions were high because of delays in the flight’s departure.

She said MacNeil Jr. needed to use the restroom “urgently” and the family found the cabin crew’s response “heavy-handed.”

“It just seems that this could have all been done another way,” she said. “Even though all offences before this court are serious, given the human element of this, the court may consider that this is a one-off and unlikely to happen again.”

Daryl McWilliams, vice-president of media relations for Sunwing, said from Toronto that the unscheduled landing could cost the vacation airline as much as $50,000.

“That’s based on the cost of the landing fees in Bermuda (and) the cost of flying a mechanic to Bermuda to check the aircraft out for stress fractures because it had to land overweight, because of the amount of fuel that was on board.”

Additional costs arose because the plane had to be searched, in accordance with Transport Canada regulations, for unextinguished cigarette butts. Sunwing had to pay for hotels and meals in Bermuda and the Dominican Republic for passengers stuck in both countries because the flight was diverted.

He said Sunwing intends to seek recourse from the MacNeils.

“We will have to take them to civil court and sue them.”

He didn’t know if the case would be heard in Canada or Bermuda.

Dave Shellington, a Charlottetown man whose wife Cathy was on the flight, said people were angered by the trouble.

“A lot of passengers were pretty upset that they lost at least a day down there,” he said Monday.

Shellington said he has spoken to his wife on Skype and she was happy with the way Sunwing handled the situation.

“The flight attendants and everybody did a really good job of dealing with it,” he said. “Sunwing looked after them really well once they did get down in Bermuda.”

His wife is on a weeklong getaway with three girlfriends and watched some of the commotion.

Shellington said he doesn’t know why anyone would violate an aircraft smoking ban that has been in place for almost 20 years.